Investigation of ultrasonic properties of a liquid metal used as a coolant in accelerator driven reactors

In this paper the techniques developed for investigation of liquid Pb/Bi alloy acoustic properties and experimental results are presented. Measurements of ultrasound velocity were performed using pulse echo technique and a correlation processing in a temperature range 160÷460°C. For transmission and reception of ultrasonic signals bismuth titanate Pz46 5 MHz ultrasonic transducers with a stainless steel waveguide were developed. Various acoustic coupling methods between the waveguide and liquid metal alloy were investigated. The ultrasound velocity dependency upon temperature is presented. The investigation carried out confirms the feasibility of the ultrasonic technique for imaging of the interior of the MYRRHA [1] type nuclear system.